Amid economic uncertainty and a labor market that seems increasingly precarious, workers are less and less willing to take career risks—even if it means staying miserable in their current role.
About 40% of American workers are unhappy in their jobs, but unwilling to leave due to concerns about the economy, according to a recent survey from The Harris Poll on behalf of hiring platform Indeed. Around half of the workers surveyed said that they are staying in their current role because they wouldn’t want to risk being laid off from a future job.
“For employed workers and even for job seekers, stability is the name and the game,” Priya Rathod, career trend expert at Indeed, tells Fortune.
Topline employment numbers are actually still strong. The most recent U.S. jobs report indicated that the economy added 139,000 jobs in May 2025, and the unemployment rate has held study for the past year at around 4.2%.
But workers are increasingly anxious about the future. More than a third of people looking for work believe that tariffs will make it more difficult to land a job, according to a recent report from ZipRecruiter’s Job Seeker Confidence Index. And in April of this year, mentions of “uncertainty” skyrocketed 80%, compared to the same time last year, according to the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index. A string of high-profile layoffs isn’t helping. Major companies including Meta, Microsoft and Disney have all had major staffing reductions this year.
“When [someone] hears about people being laid off, it’s not just things [they’re] reading or seeing in the media, it’s things that [they’re] experiencing in their community or network that’s driving [them] to fear being laid off as well,” Rathod says.
Unsurprisingly, workers’ fear about keeping their jobs is exacerbated by their gloomy view of the future. Around 44% of workers in May had a positive six month outlook, according to a recent survey from Glassdoor, an all-time low since researchers began measuring that metric in 2016. And entry-level workers are even more pessimistic than other rungs of the career ladder.
“Prepare, don’t panic,” cautions Rathod. “It benefits job seekers to figure out what they may want to do next and learn the complementary skills that open doors to adjacent roles.”
